The farmhand who was put in charge of commodities

Allen Stanford and top executives managed assets worth $5.5 billion in a secretive fashion, the trial was toldJoe Skipper/Reuters

Allen Stanford’s senior executives indulged in cronyism and nepotism, a court was told yesterday at the trial of the Texan financier accused of orchestrating a $7 billion fraud.

Mark Collinsworth, a former financial analyst at the Memphis office of Stanford Financial Group, said that Laura Pendergest-Holt and James Davis had appointed inexperienced acquaintances as hedge fund analysts without Mr Stanford’s knowledge.

Mrs Pendergest-Holt gave a job to a farmhand who worked on Mr Davis’s ranch. “He built fences and took care of cows. He was hired to take care of commodities,” Mr Collinsworth said.

He said that Mr Davis had hired his nephew and his church’s preacher as an analyst and that Mrs Pendergest-Holt’s husband, a former personal trainer, became a hedge fund manager.